"Totally Not Gay" Six: Las Vegas

I have a certain appreciation for games that came out a long time ago. For one thing, if they came out more than two years ago and I'm still hearing about them, they probably did something right. For a second, perhaps more important thing, they're usually pretty damned cheap. I picked up Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Las Vegas on Ebay for a grand total of six dollars after shipping, and this has easily been worth that measly investment.

The first thing I will say is that the game is a first person shooter. The second thing I will say is that this game is so different from your typical first-person shooter that I think you can legitimately call it a separate genre. The Rainbow Six series has been around since well before the Half Life days, little has changed, and it's still good. There have been a small handful of games that fall into the same style, but for the most part, Rainbow Six is a genre unto itself.

I could (and eventually will) explain what makes this game different by describing it, but I think to give you a proper idea, I'm first going to compare it to a game you have almost certainly played through at least once: Half Life. In Half Life, you are a person who, through the all-powerful magic of contrivance, has obtained impossible degrees of power and resilience. You can shrug off wounds that would kill ordinary men, to the point where even a grenade to the face is a survivable occurrence; although for dignity's sake you normally F7 at that point. With your massive arsenal, you basically comprise a one-man army, taking on marines and monsters alike, culminating in a climactic battle against a monster several dozen times your size.

In Rainbow Six, you are a member of one of the most well-trained, well-equipped tactical assault teams on the planet. Despite this, you are neither trained nor equipped, to take a shotgun blast to the face and live to brag about it after eating a couple medkits. Thanks to the latest in body armor technology, you are capable of taking a couple (read: two) bullets, provided don't strike any vital organs. In Half Life, the skills that will lead to your survival are quick thinking, accuracy, and a calm hear and steady trigger finger. You must be able to shoot your enemy quickly, take shelter where it's available, and make use of the terrain. Rainbow Six demands those things of you, but rather than making them the way of surviving, they are merely skills that you must have in order to implement a successful strategy. In other words, the reflexes that carry you through the normal FPS are necessary, but ultimately insufficient to get you through this one.

Simply put, you are constantly up against an enemy that has more guns and more hitpoints than you, and to survive you have to be faster and smarter. You have to be thinking about where you are in relation to your opponent, and how you outmaneuver the opponent. A classic example is a standard flank, where either you or your squadmates keep firing on an enemy position, whilst the other moves to a position where they can safely fire on the enemy. If the enemy comes out of cover to shoot you while you advance, your squad guns him down. If no, you reach a position where you can shoot the enemy and he can't shoot you. This is the basic strategy, but it is executed in myriad ways throughout the single-player campaign. The level designers do a really nice job of forcing you to employ these tactics, while at the same time giving you a few different options as to how you proceed. Ultimately, the game revolves around the notion of scouting the enemy's position, formulating an attack plan, and then following through on that plan, adjusting it on the fly as necessary.

The fact that bullets do realistic damage can frequently make the game an exercise in controller-snapping frustration, as if you make even a small error, like not noticing a terrorist hiding behind a crate before you start to move forward, you can find yourself booted back to your last checkpoint before you even realize you've screwed up. It only takes one well-placed shot to kill you. If you are scarcely clipped in the shoulder or leg, your vision becomes heavily blurred for about 15 seconds, after which you will heal. If you take a round in the torso, or two rounds in the leg (three will probably kill you), your vision gets very heavily blurred and fades to a dark black, effectively blinding you. This lasts for nearly thirty seconds, and you are almost always going to die at this point, unless you are able to blindly stumble out of harm's way. Having a good sense of your environment and well-positioned teammates can often make the difference between life or death in these situations.

Speaking of teammates, you are perpetually accompanied by two other nameless (well, they have names, I guess) special forces badasses, who are surprisingly good at their jobs. Sometimes they make you feel a bit inadequate, as they can often managed to clear a room that I couldn't get two feet in without having my highly trained ass blown off. They follow your orders to the letter, which you will find frequently gets them killed. When correctly managed, however, they are extremely efficient. Whether they're covering your flank while you snipe, or charging into a room while you sneak in through another door and get behind the enemies, these dudes are perhaps the best AI support mechanic I've ever seen. And unlike Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead, their usefulness does not hinge primarily on contrived sequences where a partner has to help you out.

The difficulty curve is quite steep, and the gameplay is only going to appeal to certain people; it's a genre unto itself, but a it's a very narrow genre. Give it a go if you find it for under $10, but if you uninstall in frustration after being unable to beat the first level, don't feel bad.